October 8, 2012

AND: Note that both polls show the candidates tied, but Gallup had Obama 5 points ahead just before the debate. Also, Rasmussen's new poll is an average of polls taken on the last 3 days, that is, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Gallup Poll in question covers Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So Gallup's poll corresponds to the poll Rasmussen reported yesterday, which had Romney 2 points ahead. So the basis for question — Has Obama healed his debate damage? — remains.

Rasmussen is currently using a D+3 turn out sample... so keep that in mind.

Gallup is a poll of registered voters... so keep that in mind.

The bounce from the debate was huge. If Romney is just able to stay even with Obama in the next debates, or even lose by a small margin, the bounce should be lasting. The first debate showed that Romney was a real candidate and that Obama is a loser.

-- The shift from adults, to registered, to likely actually does a lot of unskewing. As does the move to the more reasonable D+3 than the D+6-11 we've seen in other polls. I'm still skeptical of polls (as we all should be), but you are right. As the in-built skew in the polls disappears, we get a more clear vision of the political make-up of our nation (a deeply divided, partisan nation), which makes it clear why both parties moved to the 2000-Rovian strategy of increasing base turn outs.

Funny, I didn't think you could "fix" anything by running around and denying you got your ass kicked when everyone knows you did. I'd be interested in seeing obama's "Putz Index", it must be spiking around now.

Uh-oh garagie, it looks like Gallup's Chief Economist has become a unemployment rate truther:

The lack of face-validity of the government's unemployment numbers creates major problems, particularly during a presidential election year. The situation is worsened by the huge number of complex adjustments made to the data. Rather than debate whether something is wrong with the government's estimation process, it seems reasonable to look at other measures as an alternative.

But what does he know? I mean, people questioning the latest jobs #'s are silly idiots, remember?

On Mondays Rasmussen has been showing an Obama uptick of two to three points for polling done over the weekend that fades by Tuesday. And the NBCs of the world were reluctant to poll over the holiday weekend, but expect to see a slew of new ones on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Not everyone saw the debate but nearly everyone knows it was a drubbing.

Next is foreign affairs, and the beat down will continue. This on the heels of Team Choom talking up Romney's "inexperience" versus their track record. Ooops. No more obvious clusterfuck than the actions that led to the embassy deaths and the effort to spin it. Everyone in America knew it was not some reaction to a movie exept Obama and his sheeple.

Princeton professor Harvey RosenI can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work. It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal. The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

Obama still has momentum, its just being directed toward the ground, kind of like the momentum a well-driven golf ball has after reaching its zenith.

All his promises have reached their expiration dates and all his hopey changey bullshit has lost the luster it once had. Now he's just a mean-spirted campaigner, draining away his last viable asset: "likeabilility."

I've criticized Althouse's poor treatment of polls when it benefited Romney, so to be consistent I'm going to do it when it benefits Obama (though I can't fail to mention that she continues to follow the Althouse Rule of citing Gallup only on the rare occasions it is more favorable to Romney than Rasmussen).

Anyway, I think in this case it is reading too much into the one Rasmussen poll to say that Obama has healed his debate damage, in the sense of bouncing back to where he was pre-debate. There have been a number of post-debate polls and they all suggest that Obama lost several points following the debate. There does seem to be evidence from a couple of polls that Obama stopped losing any further ground over the weekend. But Rasmussen is the only poll suggesting that he has actually regained his losses.

Looking ahead, I see Obama before he heads off to a little needed golf course decompressing...ordering Biden to be his attack dog by hammering on the 47% and anything Romney says that "offends" foreign countries.

Jay, I'm glad I made an impression -- you're still responding to comments I made last week!

With Rosen you need to notice the crafty non-denial denial. He does not deny that the burden will increase on people making between $100,000 and $200,000, which is what Obama cited his study for. He says that it won't decrease taxes on those making over $200,000 and it won't increase on "lower and middle income" taxpayers, ie those making under $100,000.

Alternatively, we can read: "I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work" and realize you're a silly fucking propagandist.

He says he can't tell "exactly how" the Obama campaigned reached its characterization of his work. He then presents his own characterization of his work, which is not inconsistent with the Obama's campaigns characterization. At no time does he say the Obama campaign's characterization is wrong. It's a classic non-denial denial.

@AF:a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

Now keep trying to pretend that's not a denial. You can join garage in hall of shame reserved for quote miners.

Meh, Obama's campaign, via spokeswoman Cutter, said the $5 trillion thing they were pushing was a lie. I see no reason to believe the campaign would lie about lying, as that would only hurt it. Therefore, Occam razoring this, I come to the conclusion that Obama lied, Cutter's future in politics died (for correcting her boss.)

Darn. My post got eaten. I can't remember how I put it pithily but: Obama's campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Cutter said the $5 trillion was a lie, therefore, no one else really should be fighting a battle that the candidate's campaign has agreed they were in error on. If you are going to pick a hill to die on, it is advisable not to do so on a hill your commander has abandoned to the enemy.

Obama, and CBO, are looking at things through the static prism: since Romney lowers effective tax rates, and we assume no change in output, there's a huge deficit!

Romney, and most modern economists, say wait a minute: you CAN'T assume output will be the same. The whole point of altering tax rates is to alter economic output. Therefore, you CAN"T assume output will be the same under both scenarios. The reasoning is fundamentally flawed.

Got it from realclearpolitics. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html#polls

They seem to have hidden it on their main page, using only the 10/4-10/6 number.

I love those guys at realclearpolitics because they are clearly partisan Republicans, but they are more interested in making money as the go-to poll aggregator, which keeps them honest. The net result is that I can laugh at their little shenanigans, like putting a perpetual down arrow on Obama's poll numbers, while still using them as a perfectly good source for polls, without anyone doing their little I-don't-trust-Nate-Silver number.